As of yesterday we are a book free house…at least temporarily. We gathered every single book in the house and sorted them into four piles…

Goes to the apartment – mostly schoolbooks but a few personal books

Goes to donation

Schoolbooks to sell – homeschoolers have lots of sites they sell/trade used curriculum so I’ll try that route with my old stuff before just giving it away

Book Exchange (this is a link to their Facebook page in case you wanted to check them out and maybe find one near you. It is NOT an affiliate link of any kind.)

The fourth one is my new cheat…I knew there were used bookstores, but I’m such a fan of the library that I rarely buy books. But over the years we have amassed quite a collection between gifts, etc. So a few weeks ago as we headed into this transition I drove by this place and thought to give them a call. They will take our books and based on their inventory and the condition of the book, will give us store credit for the books. That way, down the road and as a treat, we can go in and “shop” without actually spending any money. (When I dropped them off, they even offered to donate the books they didn’t want to keep for me so I didn’t have to do that…score!)

We dropped off four huge boxes of books to them yesterday…dropped two more at the local thrift store and put four more boxes into storage so it’s ready for the apartment without being in the way. Our house is now book free. (Ok, the schoolbooks to sell are still here, but they will be gone soon and are neatly stacked out of the way.)

It would have been great if they actually gave us cash for our books, but I think this is a great alternative to that and will be a neat treat down the road when we have the “shopping” itch!

As the principal, administrator and only teacher in our homeschool, I made the executive decision that we will delay starting our new school routine until after the move. Since we school year round and I believe that the kids will learn many lessons from this move, I am certain it will not affect the overall scheme of things and it takes a lot of pressure off both me and the kids as we have daily tasks pertaining to the move. It also made putting all our books in storage for this last month a possibility.